


Nature has Borne Witness to Many Things

by natalyaknife91



Category: Homestuck
Genre: I was told this was sad, So be warned, this is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-24 00:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalyaknife91/pseuds/natalyaknife91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oneshot sadfic inspired by watching the Little Mermaid and being informed that the rarepair KarFef actually exists. </p>
<p>A troubled troll can run away from his problems, and perhaps find a friend. The wise friend, however well she teaches, cannot protect him from everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nature has Borne Witness to Many Things

Every land troll knew never to go near the ocean. There were so many things that could go so horribly, horribly wrong. Most trolls didn’t know how to swim, and would be caught by the waves and dragged to their deaths if they drew near. The sea trolls were in terrible moods if they had to come to land, and actively terrorized any hapless surface dweller by the shore before going about their business. All saw that large expanse of water to be nothing but a dark abyss where nightmares lurked, waiting with infinite patience to snatch young daredevils from their caretakers.

  
It was a symbol of death to most land trolls, and because of it, any corner near the water was the perfect hiding spot.

  
A small rocky outcropping found itself host to many suicidal trolls in its time. Children came to get away from bullies and shriek their woes. Adults came to let the waves beat the suffering from them and onto the rock. Nobody came to be happy.

  
It again played witness to a small little creature, sniffling and stumbling along on weak legs.

  
The child cried bright red tears, staining his cheeks a dull pink. His shirt was torn and stretched, covering welts and bruises of a sickly ruby. An eye was swelling shut, and claw marks on forearms bled freely. Tufts of hair had been ripped out, and scratches at the base of his horns inflamed to the point of swallowing the small lumps of keratin whole.

  
He sat hugging his legs close, trying his hardest to cry quietly in case of trailing aggressors. After a time, with the second moon well into its climb through the sky, his soft whimpers broke down to sobs and wails of fear and agony. His small body shuddered and convulsed as coughs and hacks spaced themselves between howls.

  
The sound rang far too clearly across the water, attracting attention he didn’t need.

  
The child didn’t notice the soft sloshing of water as a stranger came to inspect the mess he made. His mind wrote it off as imagination when a light touch brushed away hair and gently examined salted wounds. It was no longer an illusion when the stranger began to speak.

  
He jumped and scrambled away from her and her words, kicking in vain effort to get some distance. She followed quite easily, cooing soft noises and patting his hair down, giving a smile that was meant to comfort. He shrunk into himself, staring at her in fear. He didn’t understand who or what she was. Why was she there? How was he alive?

  
She confused him. She didn’t look like anything he should know. Her hair was long and curly, framing nicely finned ears and long horns. She wore delicately woven gold necklaces with embedded jewels that sparkled with the colors of the moons. Her blouse and skirt were an opaque white, contrasting a bit too sharply with grey skin.

  
To him, that all screamed wealth. Her eyes, though, occupied his young mind with perplexing thoughts.

  
A child only three sweeps old would have barely started schooling. A mutant one would be lucky to be alive, and most likely have no idea how to speak. He didn’t know the history of his people, or understand the hemocaste system. He just knew the colors of people’s eyes that treated him poorly. Rusty red, yellow, and brown were sometimes kind to him. They were nice people, who wore the things he did. The various greens and blues were cruel, and he heard stories that purples were the worst to people like him.

  
But her eyes were a pinkish purple. A color he never imagined, and it frightened him into scratching her hand away with dull nails.

  
He scooted closer to the edge of the rock, and the woman winced. She reached forward, pulling his arm to her. He cried out a small protest, but was soon encased in long, cool arms. Biting his lip enough to draw blood, he grew silent as he sat there trembling.

  
All he did for a long while was stare at her as she hummed a few lullabies and rocked them both as gently as possible.

  
The moons eventually set, and a few hours later the sun was nearing the horizon. Despite her whisper, he cringed as if she had shouted a question. A frantic shake of his head had her stand them both up.

  
Trepidation widened his eyes as he saw how tall she was. At nearly twice his height, she seemed intimidating, and he began to tear up again before she knelt back down to his level. More coos and petting calmed him to silence, and she carefully held his hand in hers. Soft questions directed her to his hive, where she retreated and realized her luck of no witnesses.

  
A few weeks later, the child returned to the rocks, healed and standing as brave as he could. He maintained his rigid position for hours before a small ripple against the stone grabbed his attention.

  
Torn between running back to his hive and staying to meet his possible death, he huddled close to the ground and peered into the darkness. He gasped at the face he saw past his reflection, and scuttled back a few feet.

  
After a moment passing, the woman’s head and horns carefully rose above the ledge, a questioning look on her face. The boy opened and closed his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but chose to look steadily at his feet.

  
The woman pulled herself easily out of the water and sat in a carefully poised position. Slowly, she held her arms out, and looked at him expectantly. A few seconds ticked by while he fiddled with the end of his oversized shirt, but he slowly shuffled his feet towards her.

  
She smiled and hummed more songs as she hugged him, laughing as quietly as possible when he started playing with her hair.

  
His hands grew idle and he pointed to the sky, and she noticed that the moons had gone. The boy shakily stood and hustled away, waving at her. Confused, she waved back, and watched as he walked independently back to his home.

  
Months and sweeps passed, with their meetings more and more frequent. She taught him things he should have learned as a child, and he absorbed the knowledge well. He struggled with portions of the language, with his vocabulary hideously crippled by his childhood silence, but excelled at remembering history and lore.  
His favorite was the ancient tales of the stars, before their people had begun conquering them. Sometimes he’d try and make up stories about them, splaying his hands out to the sky to paint the pictures in his head. That fascinated the woman more than his elaborate myths of love conquering evil through peasants and princesses. She enjoyed watching him be so taken by something that he smiled and showed his dull teeth, a point of insecurity for him.

  
She never taught him about the caste system, even when he questioned after being taunted by his peers. It was always dismissed as a silly old archaic thing that was bound to pass. She waved off his pestering of her eye color just as easily. It didn’t matter, she’d say, what color your eyes were. Everybody should be treated the same.

  
When he became an adult a sweep and a half before a rust-blooded acquaintance of the same age, it brought up even more questions. What did it mean? Was he special? Was it why he was always picked on?

  
Her response was quiet and sad, and he couldn’t make out a lot of it. He garnered it meant he would die sooner than anyone he knew, and that the thought made tears form in her voice. But it didn’t make him sad at all, and that confused him.

  
She smiled at his explanation as to why that was. He believed there were too few good things to be happy about, and too many bad things to want to get away from. If he died earlier than a lot of other people, then his suffering ends that much sooner. Though it meant he had to part from her just as soon, he was more or less okay with the trade off, because he was assured she would remember him, and that his torturers wouldn’t.

  
The night after their talk, the outcrop was witness to violence that it was altogether unused to. The boy- now man- had weapons drawn against a mob of multi-caste trolls. His sickles seemed large but flimsy in his hands, and were virtually useless over all in defense. Several of the higher blooded trolls had projectile weapons, and snickered loudly as they fired off arrow and bullet at him. An indigo blood, a hulking menace of a troll, held up one of his clubs and casually swung it like a bat, launching him off the ledge and into open water.

  
It took moments for him to flail beneath the surface, and the crowd dispersed in satisfaction that he was dead. Every troll was afraid of the water, and never learned to swim. He was no exception, even when his friend pitched the idea.

  
After gurgling away the last of his breath, he calmed his frantic movements. Floating, or rather, sinking, wasn’t that bad of a thing. If his chest didn’t burn from inhalation of seawater, he could say that it was quite peaceful. Maybe that explained why his friend had such a nicer demeanor than anyone else.

  
With a small smile he looked to where he thought he could see the light from a moon. Slowly blinking, he found himself quite tired. If he napped, he wouldn’t miss anything. If he napped forever, he’d be comfortable like this.

  
And that is how his friend found him hours later, a tired child with a smile on his face. She tried her hardest to rouse him after pulling him from the seafloor, slapping his face this way and that, beating his chest in hopes of starting a pulse.

  
Nothing in the first aid kit she tucked away after he slipped and fell onto the rocks helped. Nothing stopped her from clutching at the rags he wore, the ones he refused to let her replace. Nothing kept back screams of agony from forming his name.


End file.
